Melisande eventually finished the constable’s daughter’s cloak. Quietly as an old grave, she had picked up and wove in the dropped stitches with no intention to alter her swordsman’s heart from its cruel course, as she might have done.
Instead, she knit pattern sense into tears and let them fall.
The villagers had never known rain and cold as they did that summer. Within a charger’s ride of Melisande’s cottage, the rivers overran their banks, forests hung low, crops drowned in their rows and sheep grazed in mud. Mushrooms and slugs took up residence on garden paths and in the shadows of rotting fruit. Finally, at the urging of the goatherd, those in the know gathered and headed for the knitter’s cottage.
Melisande looked up from her work at a knock on the door. “Millie,” called a familiar voice. She moved from under the voluminous folds of a dark gray blanket thick with black threads, and went to answer for her stitches.
A small group of men and women stood in the rain wearing Melisande’s fine work: the miller a sweater, the thatcher a vest, the goatherd his tunic and the constable’s daughter her cloak. Clutching a woolen cap to his chest, the carpenter flicked a nervous glance at the steely sky. “Millie, lass. Will you not help us?” His large brown eyes grew gentle, almost desperate.
No one had ever called Melisande a witch, a dusty term used more often in cities than in the wilds, where folk lived with things like pattern sense even if they did not possess the skill to wield it. But the villagers’ presence here wrought truth from suspicion.
“‘Tis your own business,” said the midwife. “But if I didn’t know no better, I’d say your heart’s been broken.”
The others mumbled and nodded, shifting on their feet. The blacksmith, whom the swordsman used to visit during his stays in the valley, glanced up with telling brevity.
Melisande lowered her gaze to the ground, her fingers tingling with the dragon’s breath. It was labored, now, not as bright and lithe as it once had been.
“We’re your kith and kin,” said the goatherd.
The simple statement scattered Melisande’s thoughts like finding a mouse nest in a yarn drawer. Since the swordsman had abandoned her to the subtle whispers of pattern sense, kith and kin had become a cat, a goat and a garden patch. But these were her people. As they waited, their faces filled with love and sadness, she understood. Pattern sense was not a thing of mortals. Its roots had no bottom, no end, no definition; it lay in her hands to give it form. She looked up, gulped back tears with a grateful nod, and returned inside.
She spent all that night unraveling the black from the gray, twisting it into silent skeins and putting it away. Then she pulled out blue and gold, and began to cast stitches.
The next morning, sunlight dawned upon the soaked, glittering land.